Patent Evaluation Services for Investment Professionals

Investment professionals are increasingly required to understand the true value of patents as the patents became an important investment asset class, and thus, play a significant role in investment decision making processes: investment professionals are frequently involved in patent valuation during M&A activity, buying and selling patents for bankruptcy cases, patent secured debt financing deals, sale & license-back transactions, securitizations using patent as the underlying asset, (long or short) stock investment  for IP based business entities etc. To understand the true value of patents, however, accurate evaluation of patents under investment consideration is need. Therefore, accurate evaluation of patents became the essential part for investment professionals to figure out feasibility of investment involving patents.

To evaluate patents accurately, and thus, to get an accurate read on any investment opportunities, legal expertise in additional to technical and business expertise are required due to legal rights nature of patents. Therefore, involvement of expert with the technical, business, and legal expertise is crucial to evaluate patents accurately, and thus, to understand the true value of patents. TechIPm LLC provides the expert patent evaluation services for investment professionals exploiting the technical, business, and legal expertise and many years of experience in evaluating more than ten thousand patents relating to over hundred million dollars of investments in patent investments.

Step 1: High Level Evaluation

Project Scope

A client’s patents are reviewed to provide overall qualities and investment values in alignment with client’s investment goal.

Deliverables

Excel file for related applications/products/services/markets, related standards, discoverability of potential licensee (Infringer), revenue generation potential etc.

 Step 2: Deep Dive Evaluation

Project Scope

Upon client’s request, selected patents or patent portfolio(s) are analyzed utilizing well known valuation methods (e.g. income, market, cost method) in detail to provide ROI based on the high level evaluation.

Deliverables

Written valuation report

TechIPm’s technology expertise includes:

Mobile Computing & Wireless Communications Technology: LTE, CDMA (CDMA 2000, WCDMA, HSPA), WLAN, WPAN, RFID, NFC, WSN, Cognitive Radio/SDR, Optical Wireless, Mobile TV, Mobile Cloud Computing, RF MEMS, RFIC etc.

Smartphone Applications: Biometrics, Location Base Services/Indoor Navigations, Mobile Payments, Augmented Reality, Wireless/Mobile UI, IoT (Internet of Things) applications etc.

Green ICT: M2M, Smart Grids, Green Wireless Technologies, Electric Cars etc.

Bio & Medical IT: Mobile Healthcare (IEEE 11073 PHD, WBAN), Biometrics, Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) etc.

For more information, please contact Dr. Alex G. Lee at alexglee@techipm.com

LTE Patent Valuation

TechIPm, LLC (http://www.techipm.com/) provides valuation service for LTE patent portfolios.

Methodology

1. Auditing for the complete set of LTE patent portfolios.

To find the key LTE patent portfolios, a keyword search of the USPTO patent data base has been performed. For completeness, patent data in the lists of patents declared essential to 3GPP LTE appear at the ETSI IPR Online website is also included.

2. Evaluation of the LTE patent portfolio

Portfolio quality evaluation:
Categorize the identified patents through the evaluation process by technology in the standard specifications Key technology components for an implementation of the LTE baseband modem and LTE radio protocol.

Essentiality analysis:
To evaluate the essentiality of a LTE patent, patent disclosures in claim and detail description for each LTE patent are compared to the final versions of the 3GPP Release 8 technical specifications.

3. Calculation of base values.

Calculate a base value of a LTE patent using the recent Nortel's and Motorola's patent deals.

4. Strengths/weaknesses of a particular IPR holder's LTE patent portfolio.

Compare the evaluated patent portfolio with the patent portfolio of Nortel (Motorola).

* Interesting LTE IPR holders: InterDigital, RIM, Nokia, TI, Qualcomm, Samsung, LG, Ericsson, ZTE

5. Valuation of the LTE patent portfolio.

Calculate the value of a particular IPR holder's LTE patent portfolio using the the base value utilizing the portfolio's quality factors.

*In recent Jefferies & Co's valuation (http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/09/21/identifying-the-tech-leaders-in-lte-wireless-patents/), only the essentiality factor (TechIPm provided) was considered.

For more information, please contact Alex Lee at alexglee@techipm.com.


©2012 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

Nortel's LTE Patents Valuation

Nortel's patent portfolio for LTE baseband products (OFDM/MIMO Modem and Channel Coder) in the lists of patents declared essential to LTE appear at the ETSI IPR Online shows that there are 17 issued patents and 14 published patent applications in the United States as of January 31, 2010. Among LTE patent licensing contenders for the US LTE baseband product market, Nortel's IPR share was about 10 %.

To evaluate the essentiality of Nortel's LTE patents for OFDM/MIMO standards, patent disclosures for each essential patent candidate are compared to the technical specifications for LTE OFDM/MIMO standards. Only 11 out of 31 patents are evaluated as strong candidates for LTE essential patent.

Assuming a licensing share of 10% for $2 billion global end-user LTE device silicon market according to market research firm In-Stat and 10 years of licensing time, the value of the Nortel's LTE patent portfolio is roughly estimated to be about $0.4 billion for 2% royalty rate.


©2010 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/